28. All Bound Beautifully Together
ALL BOUND BEAUTIFULLY TOGETHER
The carriage waited out front to take them back to London, but Guin stood before her father’s closed study door, Bran a steady warmth behind her, and knocked.
“Come in,” her father said, his voice muffled.
She pushed through and stood just before his desk, hands folded in front of her.
He paused over his ledger then finished a line and held his pen just above the page as he lifted his gaze to look at her. “Oh. Gabriella. Do you need something?”
“We’re soon to leave. But I wanted to ask you something first.”
He set the pen down and leaned back. “I suppose I cannot stop you from asking it.”
“You cannot.”
Her mother sailed into the room. “You wished to speak with me, Cairnsbury?”
“No,” her father said.
“I did.” Guin gestured to a chair in front of the desk. “Sit, Mother.”
“I… I don’t know if I should.”
“I think you should,” Bran rumbled.
Her mother sat.
Guin stood before both her parents and wondered at the misery of their lives. They couldn’t even look at each other. She didn’t want a bit of it.
Guin set her ancestor’s journal on the desk, opened it to the right page and pushed it toward her father. “Read.”
With a quick glance at Guin, her father bowed his neck over the journal. Then he lifted his head again, shaking it. “I don’t understand.”
“Did you truly believe in the curse, or was it just a means of controlling me?” Guin asked.
Her father’s mouth dropped open.
“What is this about?” Her mother groped for the journal, yanked it into her lap and read. She looked at her husband, then at Guin, then read it again. “This is… what is this?”
“It seems to suggest,” Bran said, “that one of the Earls of Cairnsbury fabricated a curse based on family history in order to control his daughter.”
“We haven’t looked through all the journals yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find other similar evidence.” Guin took the journal from her mother. “We’re taking all of them back to London.”
Her father rose to his feet. “If you find anything incriminating in there, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Bran asked. “As I see it, your family is armpit deep in lies and possibly even murder.”
“Murder!” her mother shrieked.
“These are absurd allegations,” her father said.
“Are they?” Guin asked. “I’m not so sure. Did you know about this, Father? Did you have Tommy killed?”
Her father’s jaw worked as if trying to keep something behind his teeth.
It didn’t work. He exploded. “That boy was a gutter rat! I didn’t have him murdered, though.
I gave him more money than he could resist. He’s the one who chose to ride into a damned storm.
He got himself killed. But that’s the curse! ”
“It’s not a curse,” Guin said, feeling the lightness of truth. “It was convenient, though. A curse that’s connected to a glamour and impacts women as well as men—blasphemy. It was easy to keep everyone quiet. And quiet people are easy to control.”
Her father fell into his chair, arms limp, jaw hard. “It was done to me, too, by my father. I never wanted to marry your mother. But Giselle died… I thought it was real. I only learned it wasn’t when he died.”
“Who’s Giselle?” Bran whispered near Guin’s ear.
“A woman I debuted with.” Her mother pushed to her feet, steadier than Guin had ever seen her. “Your father courted her first, and she was… She got sick.”
“Poison,” Guin’s father said. “The Pottingers are quite good with poisons.”
Her mother’s eyes were red rimmed when she faced her husband. “Your father killed that girl?”
“I wanted to kill him.”
“And then you both ruined my life. You made me send my daughter away!” Her mother was screaming, scrambling over the desk, hands turned to claws and seeking eyes to gouge out.
Bran pulled her backward, and Guin wrapped her mother up tight.
“I’m going to kill him,” her mother said.
“Then will you come visit me? In London?” There was much her mother still had to answer for, but Guin had learned the trick of forgiveness, and she did not think she could stop. Her mother had been a pawn, too. She deserved a chance to do better.
And to get her own revenge.
Guin released her mother and fell backward into the warm comfort of her husband’s embrace. “I want to go home.”
As they walked out of the house she’d known for so little time before she’d been sent to live in a lonely castle on the moors, her parents’ voices shook the walls.
Something crashed against a wall. Her mother wailed.
Light and shadow danced a fatal waltz as candles burned fast then sizzled out into nothing.
Doors slammed. Guin’s father screamed something guttural and indecipherable that was stopped short by silence.
Guin walked away from it all, stepped into the cool winter sunshine then into the waiting carriage. She settled next to her husband as the carriage took off and let herself breathe in freedom as he kissed the top of her head.
“Should we have helped her?” Guin asked.
“I think your mother is fine. It’s your father you should worry about. This is their battle. Best to leave them to it.”
“It all seems so senseless,” Guin said. “An entire family built on lies, no one questioning it. I feel such a fool. I should have known it was something like that.”
“Stories are powerful. Scary stories even more so. I suspected it was something like this, though. I just needed the evidence to convince you.”
She swatted his arm. “Yes, yes, you’re quite observant and intelligent and—”
“An excellent kisser.”
“Naturally.”
“And good with a sword.”
She kissed his chest. “Of course.”
“And madly in love with you.”
No of course to that. It felt like a miracle. But she’d revel in it anyway, believe in it. She might as well put her experience believing in the impossible to better use.
“I would have fought by your side my entire life, Guin,” Bran said, voice gruff. “As long as it took to keep you safe.”
“I’m glad it didn’t take that long.”
He kissed her temple and chuckled, and she rested against him, pulled the silver chain from her bodice where it dipped from her neck into her cleavage.
The potion bottle had become lovers, entwined entirely so there was no end or beginning to either of them.
Male and female, love and hate, light and dark, secrets and truth.
All bound impossibly, beautifully together.
Stepping back into the Mayfair mansion three days later felt right.
It wasn’t Guin’s shop. It wasn’t her tiny flat off Finsbury Square.
It was too big for two people and possessed a conservatory with a heated floor, a bathing chamber with a stained-glass window, a bird somewhere dropping black feathers, a few too many well-armed guards, and a man she adored walking a half step behind her, his big, warm hand at the small of her back and his voice rough in her ear.
“Sounds like it’s not going well,” he said.
Also, it was currently spiraling into chaos.
A hellcat, apparently, had been let loose in their house, and she was flying down the stairs, screeching like a tiny blond banshee and brandishing a wooden sword.
The unknown child slashed at Bran’s legs, and he picked her up by the legs, held her upside down, and she was so startled, she dropped her sword and stared at him with her mouth open.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
Her hands hit her hips. “Who are you?”
“I’m the Duke of Braxton, and this is my house. I don’t remember inviting any ruffians in.”
“Oh, but you did.” Hesperus appeared from the shadows and pointed at the tiny hellcat. “That’s Madwoman Poppy’s sister. The madwoman refused to stay put unless we brought along the little kitten with claws. She’s unexpectedly slippery.”
“Madame Poppy or the sister?” Guin asked.
“Both,” Hesperus drawled.
“What’s your name?” Guin asked as Bran set the girl on her feet.
“Isadora,” she lisped.
“It’s not,” Hesperus said. “They won’t tell us what her real name is, and she has a new one every hour.”
“It’s her name, let her choose it.” Madame Poppy appeared from the direction of the conservatory and eyed Guin over. “You’ve returned. Dragged back or of your own accord?”
“Entirely under my own powers, thank you very much.”
Madame Poppy shrugged and wandered off, and Isadora bolted, and Hesperus looked to Bran.
“Anything I should know?” Hesperus asked.
“Not right now. I’ll call you if there is.”
Guin pulled Bran up the stairs and to her bedchamber where the writing desk was still a potion-cluttered worktable, though as well organized as Berkley or Susan were likely to manage.
“Bath?” she asked.
Bran’s answer was to pull her into the bathing chamber and kiss her soundly as they tore at each other’s clothes.
“Just so you know,” Madame Poppy’s voice broke them apart. She was yelling from the hallway on the other side of the wall. “I may have had a breakthrough with the potion you were working on.”
“She was reading my notes!” Guin hissed.
“I’m not surprised.”
“I’m happy to share it with you when you’re… done.” Madame Poppy’s chuckle was cut off with a “Hey!”
“Get back downstairs, you madwoman,” Hesperus shouted.
Then the sounds faded, and they were alone again.
“You’re going to have to get your house in order, duke.” Guin kissed his bare chest.
“I’ll start with you.” He picked her up and set her in the tub, turned on the water and joined her, and they kissed so well and so long, that the heat of their bodies warmed the tub and bubbled the water around them.
The stained-glass window above bathed them in green and gold, the colors of her husband’s eyes.
Settled against his chest, Guin tilted her head back and kissed her husband on his lips.
She’d found freedom in his love, forgiveness in his betrayal, and light in his shadows.
And in the green-gold of his eyes, she found their future.